November 2008

A Great Victory ... Thank You!

By Jon Huey, on November 27, 2008

Butte County took a little longer to come in than we had expected, but it was worth the wait.  The count is now complete with the possible exception of a handful of votes in El Dorado County and the election result stands at: McClintock 185,615 and Brown at 183,840.

The lead of 1,775 votes is a margin of victory that puts us well outside the possibility of a recount changing the outcome.  To put it in perspective, it is more than twice the margin by which I lost the race for State Controller in 2002.

Great News!

By Jon Huey, on November 22, 2008

More than 4/5 of the uncounted ballots in this race were announced today, boosting our lead to 1,793 votes, or 0.49 percent.  There are less than 4,100 ballots yet to be counted – all from counties that we carried with between 51 and 53 percent – and Charlie Brown would need to receive 71.9 percent of the remaining ballots to overtake our current lead.

Lead Holding Steady...

By Jon Huey, on November 19, 2008

The latest batch from Nevada County dropped us by 60 votes, partially offset by a 30-vote gain out of El Dorado County, leaving us with a lead of 592 today.  Nevada County is rapidly running out of ballots – we estimate it has roughly 1,000 yet to count.  Everything else – approximately 25,000 more ballots -- are from counties that we are carrying.

Monday Morning Update

By Jon Huey, on November 17, 2008

We start this week with a lead of 622 votes out of 339,292 total cast, or 0.18 percent.  The good news is that there are less than 1,500 ballots to tally in the only county that Brown won and over 25,000 ballots to process in the counties that I carried.

We expect final Nevada County numbers to come in by the middle of this week. Once they have been reported, our lead should steadily grow as the remaining ballots from Placer, Sacramento, Butte and El Dorado counties are tallied.

Update: Lead Continues To Hold...

By Jon Huey, on November 15, 2008

Nevada County has completed 85 percent of its uncounted ballots and the three days of tallies have cost us 1,350 votes of the 1,500 loss that we expected.  However, El Dorado and Sacramento returns have been much higher than expected, so it now seems unlikely that we will dip into negative territory any time during the counting of the remaining ballots.

Holding Steady At 1,200...

By Jon Huey, on November 14, 2008

Our lead has held steady at 1,248 votes out of 334,320 now counted, or 0.37 percent.  This gives us 50.19 percent of the counted vote and means that we need 48.18 of the remaining 34,000 uncounted ballots.

Our Lead Expands To 1,283...

By Jon Huey, on November 13, 2008

Our lead has now widened to 1,283 votes out of 326,395 counted, or 0.39 percent.  We are now taking 50.20 percent of the votes counted and need 48.49 percent of the remaining 42,500 ballots.

No Change Today...

By Jon Huey, on November 12, 2008

As of late afternoon there have been no changes in the reported count – we are still ahead by 1,092 votes, or 0.34 percent out of 313,384 votes counted.

Lead Widens To Over 1,000 Votes...

By Jon Huey, on November 11, 2008

Our lead has increased from 889 votes on Saturday to 1,092 votes Monday evening out of 318,384 counted, boosting our margin from 0.28 percent to 0.34 percent.  We are receiving 50.17 percent of the votes counted and need 48.95 percent of the remaining 52,000 uncounted ballots.  Better still, in every county our proportion of the vote is greater than election night, increasing our percentage margin by nearly 2 ½ fold.

Our Lead Widens...

By Jon Huey, on November 10, 2008

Our lead has again increased slightly today to 889 votes out of 313,609 now counted, giving us a margin of 28/100ths of one percent.  There are now an estimated 57,000 votes yet to be processed.  We are currently receiving 50.14 percent of the votes counted and need 49.22 percent of the remaining vote.  In short, this is still too close to call, but I’d rather be me than the other guy.